I grew up loving a stack of waffles slathered
with butter and smothered in rich maple syrup, but in the early 18th century they didn't use syrup but rather they drench their waffles with melted butter and wine. So thank you to Trade coffee for sponsoring this video, as in the words of donkey "I'm making waffles!" this time on Tasting History. Many historic waffle recipes are very similar to their modern count part so as I was trying to find something different and unique worthy of Tasting History, it took a little while but I finally came across a recipe that I think deserves a revival even if it's just in my personal kitchen. This recipe comes from 1714 from A Collection of Above Three Hundred Receipts in Cookery, Physic and Surgery; For the Use of all Good Wives Tender Mothers and Careful Nurses.' And it comes just a few years before the English adopted the term waffle, because at this time they still referred to it as the right Dutch-Wafer. "Take four eggs, and beat them very well, then take a good spoonful of fine sugar, one nutmeg grated, a pint of cream, and a pound of flour, a pound of butter melted, two or three spoonfuls of rose water, and two
good spoonfuls of yeast; mix all well together, and bake them in your wafter-tongs on the fire. For the sauce take grated cinnamon, sack, and melted butter, sweetened to your taste." What's interesting is that if you look at later versions of this same exact cookbook you can see how the spelling of the word flour changed in a fairly short amount of time. From flower like a flower in 1714 to our modern spelling of flour, f-l-o-u-r in 1746. They did use that spelling earlier on but they could both
be used kind of interchangeably until about this time. It's also written just a few years before the English took on the Dutch term waffle, and that is the one obviously that kind of won out
in the long run. So for these Dutch Wafers, or waffles, what you'll need is 2 eggs, 2 teaspoons of sugar, 1 teaspoon of grated nutmeg, 1 cup or 235 milliliters of cream, a little less than 2 cups or 225 grams of flour, 1 cup or 225 grams of butter melted. And you want to use salted butter, if you don't then add
a little salt. Then 1 teaspoon of rose water and 1 and 1/2 teaspoon of dried yeast. Now they would have probably been using like ale barm, the the liquid yeast that comes from from making ale, but I don't have that so dried yeast is what I'm using. So first add the yeast sugar and nutmeg into the flour
and whisk together. Then beat the eggs nice and well and whisk in the cream, then add the melted butter, and the rose water. Once everything's mixed together add in the dry ingredients stirring them in until just combined. Then cover the mixture and set it aside to rise for at least an hour.
It should start to get either a little bubbly or a little puffy. It's a lot thicker of a batter
than a modern waffle batter so instead of bubbles it might get puffy, but you're just looking to make sure that yeast gets to working. And while it does you can go ahead and make yourself a nice cup of coffee from today's sponsor Trade. Trade is a coffee subscription service that helps you
make better coffee at home. Basically you tell Trade what you look for in a coffee, how you like to drink your coffee, and how much coffee you do drink. And then they will curate a feed of coffee from over 55 local roasters just for you. They produce hundreds of different roasts so there's
plenty of variety and they're always fresh because the coffee arrives on your doorstep within days of
being roasted. My latest bag is the Platinum Blend from Sterling Coffee Roasters in Portland. It's filled with bright citrus flavors but then it has a toasty sweetness which I love, and it finishes off nice and smooth. This is one coffee I will definitely be asking for more of, and you can do that you can tell that which coffees you really, really liked and you want to see more of, and then
other coffees you can give feedback and they'll swap them out to make coffees that are really what you want so the feed is constantly improving. And right now when you sign up with Trade using my
link at drink trade.com/maxmiller you'll get $15 off of select plans plus your first bag of coffee is free. That is drink trade.com/maxmiller. I will put the link in the description and now let us move on to our wine and butter sauce for which you will need: 1/2 cup or 113 grams of melted butter, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, 1 tablespoon of sugar, and 2 tablespoons of sack. What was that? You're asking me what is sack? Well sack is an antiquated term for a type of wine, it was one of the more
popular wines of the 16th through 18th century and mostly came from the area around Spain and
the Canary Islands, and could actually refer to several types of wine. Most of these types of wine don't actually exist anymore but the closest thing that you're going to get is a dry sack sherry,
so get some sherry. I actually don't really like sherry on its own but in in food it seems to
work so just add the sherry along with some cinnamon and the sugar to the melted butter and
whisk everything together until it's dissolved, and then set that aside keeping it warm so the
butter stays melted as you start making your waffles. Now at the time of the recipe they would have used a cast iron waffle iron with very long handles, and the iron would sit on the hot coals of a hearth and there were two types of iron. The first was thism, this is so heavy by the way you
can't imagine this is actually made in Norway, so I'll open it up and you can see it's it's very
very shallow but it has an intricate pattern and because it's shallow these would make more like
wafers the way that we think of them today, very thin, very crisp and not what we want for this. Instead we want to use some something that has the more traditional crisscross pattern that would be deeper. That's what they would use for yeasted wafers, or waffles, and our recipe is yeasted so we know that's the one to use. Now most of us don't have a hearth in our kitchen so you can use just an electric waffle maker, waffle iron, and that's actually what I would suggest. There are
ones that go on top of the stove and that's what I am using. It's basically meant for like camping. The thing is there is so much butter. In this recipe so much more butter than a normal waffle today that it melts and it starts to come out and it starts to make little little fires if you- use an electric one. Also because of the amount of butter in this you don't actually have to grease the griddle or the waffle maker at all. The butter is already there but a little bit later in 1907 there is a description of how to grease your waffle iron if you want. "To whom is a portioned the two waffle irons, lights the gas under them, greases the irons when hot with a square of salt pork on
the end of a fork and cooks the first waffle..." Again, you do not need to do that you don't need to add
butter or spray or anything, this has plenty of butter to make it so these don't stick. So first heat the iron over the stove or if you're using an electric one, which you should, then just turn it on and let it heat up, and then spoon some batter into the iron and clamp it shut. Again this is a much thicker batter than a water batter so it's not really pourable so you do kind of have to spoon it in but it works I promise you. Let the waffle cool for 3 to 5 minutes, and then open it up et voilà! A lovely waffle. Then we have to do this a bunch more times because we want to have a whole little stack of waffles and so that'll give you plenty of time to make sure that you are SUBSCRIBED to Tasting History, and it'll give me time to tell you about the history of waffles. The origin of waffles really has to start with their name. One of the earliest words for them was the old French oblie which came from the Greek obelios, and that may have referred to some sort of flat bread
that was pressed between irons though I could not find any actual evidence of that but that's the story. Then there was the old North French word waufre, probably coming from a Germanic word meaning honeycomb. In French that word became gaufre and in English it became wafer but in Middle Dutch it became wafel. Now all of these words at one time or another referred to something akin to waffles in many different forms, but the origin of the dish itself actually starts with communion wafers. Flat irons were used to press dough into thin bread going way, way back but around the 9th or 10th century we start to see irons specifically meant to make communion wafers. These would make small wafers often embossed with a crucifix or an image of Jesus on them. As time went on the depictions became more and more elaborate sometimes showing entire scenes from the Bible and as they got more elaborate they got bigger so that some of these wafers were like a foot in diameter. Eventually the religious iconography gave away to more secular designs and symbols, and these would lead to a whole genre of sweet wafers throughout Europe like the Spanish barquillo, the Norwegian krumkake, and the Italian pizzelle. But during the Middle Ages it was France where these wafers truly flourished. By the year 1200 these large molds known as moule à oublies or wafer irons became a common sight in markets, and in 1270 the guild of obloyers or wafer makers was established. And wafers sold outside of church quickly became popular and unlike their communion counterparts became varied in flavor. In one of my favorite works of medieval literature called 'Le Ménagier de Paris' the narrator who is ostensibly an older man who
has just married a much younger woman is teaching her how to run the household and one of the things he says is that if you're getting ready to throw a feast for a wedding you got to go buy some of these wafers. "For the bride's service you must order from the oublie maker a dozen and a half cheese-filled waffles." A little aside, I love this work so much and it's so interesting that it actually is one of the big inspirations for my second cookbook which I am currently working on, and it's kind of all on the history of of older cooking texts with a bunch of obviously old recipes. So yeah
it's coming, no time soon, but I'm working on it I promise. Actually some of the recipe testing already has begun, my Patreon patrons are helping me out with that. So yeah. It's very, very exciting.
Anyway this older work actually has some of the if not the earliest recipes for different kinds of waffles. One is made with a traditional batter of eggs and flour but it has wine actually in the batter, and then it says that you take some of the batter, and put it on the iron put a piece of cheese on top, and then more batter on top of that before you smash it into a wafer. So I'm assuming
that this cheese filled wafer or waffle is the one that you get if you are hosting a bride's feast. Also the mixture is definitely thicker than today's waffle batter because it says that you can actually like knead it with your hands so it- you could make it into like a ball and put
it onto uh the waffle iron though there is one recipe for what he calls a pourable wafer which I guess probably is more like a waffle batter that you would use today but all in all they're more like wafers than they are waffles. Now if you're thinking that cheese in a wafer, or waffle, is a
little unorthodox, delicious probably, but a little unorthodox then please let me introduce you to a 15th century recipe from England for waffres or wafer. This one has all the standard ingredients like eggs and flour and then there's sugar and ginger for flavoring but then it says "Take the Wombe of a luce, and seeth here well, and do it on a mortar and tender cheese there to..." So this wafer also has cheese and the boiled womb of a luce or a pike which is a type of fish. That does not sound great to me but it turns out that fish flavored waffles were very popular during Lent though during Lent you wouldn't have had the cream or the eggs or anything like that, no butter so
would have just mostly been fish flavored waffles and I think that's something that is probably best
left in the past. Now with an abundance of flavored wafers coming into existence the sellers of these wafers in Paris became quite numerous so much so that they were having trouble all fitting in the area of Paris where the sellers were and so they were jockeying for space and quarrels would would break, out fights would break out over waffle turf because of this it's said that King Charles the Ninth
in 1560 had to place restrictions on the merchants saying that they had to be at least deux toises apart from each other a toise being an old French measurement of about 6 feet. And on the busiest days of the year like Easter, Christmas, and the Feast of the Assumption they had to be kept away from the churches altogether. It was around this same time that in Belgium and Holland they began to augment their wafer thin waffles with a fluffier version of the waffle. In the late 16th century 'Een Antwerps Kookboek' a recipe says to "Take white flour, warm cream, fresh melted butter, yeast and mix together until the flour is no longer visible. Then add ten or twelve egg yolks..." With this introduction of yeast probably from the a making process like barm, then you're going to get a much lighter and fluffier waffle provided you have the waffle maker that you need to get that type of of
consistency because if they used something like this no matter the yeast that's in it's going to make a very, very thin waffle like wafer but if you have one that has deeper holes in it
you'll get a fluffier waffle so I can only assume that it's around this time that we start to see
that traditional grid pattern that has the deep pockets for a traditional waffle. And so it's no surprise that it is around this time in art that we start seeing waffles that look like waffles
with their current grid-like pattern, and with this new waffle available there is an explosion
of different waffle recipes all around northern and western Europe. Some look very similar to the
one that we're making today or even to the modern waffle but others are flavored with things like cardamom, or wine, or even chocolate. And throughout Europe waffles yeasted or not become associated with different times of year. In England they are associated with the sheep shearing time of year. A 16th century poem from 'The Plowman's Feasting Days' says "Wife, make us a feast, spare flesh neither corn, make wafers and cakes for our sheep must be shorn. At sheep shearing neighbors no other thing
crave but good cheer and welcome like neighbors to have." In Sweden, Norway, and Denmark waffles were
eaten on the Feast of the Annunciation or March 25th. Why this happened probably has a link to just some word play. See the Swedish word for the feast day was varfrudagen and that sounds similar to vaffeldagen or waffle day. And while the Nordic countries were celebrating the visit of the Archangel Gabriel to mother and Mary with waffles the English colonists in America were enjoying waffles with a frolic a waffle frolic. These were parties where in addition to an entire meal waffles played a key role, and in 1744 a student at Yale University named William Livingston talked about one of these waffle frolics. "We had the waffle frolic at Miss Walton's... the feast as usual was preceded by cards; after a few games a magnificent supper appeared in grand order in decorum but for my own part I was not a little grieved that so luxurious a feast should come under the name of a waffle frolic." It is kind of a ridiculous name and so they ended up turning it into waffle party, or waffle supper, and they remained popular though all through the 19th century and into the 20th century. They actually kept going until the 1960s in parts of America but for me the waffle party really hit it zenith in 1907. There was a book called 'Suppers Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions' and it described how to throw one of these waffle parties paying specific attention to the invitations. "Let us have a waffle party and introduce some of the men to more intimate acquaintance with the mysteries of the cuisine... The invitations are made of cream white satin, fashioned in the exact shape and size of a waffle section, padded with white cotton wadding and tacked to simulate the meeting place of the irons. They are then scorched to the right color with a hot iron and on them is printed in sepia tints come and eat me." Delightful with just a hint of innuendo but it does sound
like a lot of fun, one of these big old waffle parties or waffle suppers but the meal
kind of went on for quite some time with different foods but waffles were coming out continuously because everybody invited got to be part of making the waffles so like two people would be in the kitchen at all times making the waffles so they were constantly coming out during the supper, but that's a lot of work and I can't imagine most people would have had the time or money to do that especially if they're also having to to sew a bunch of waffle-shaped invitations and that is why the waffle party and pretty much everything in this book was definitely geared toward the upper crust. "To the Aristocracy of America. To that much abused but very eminent class, the society women of America, this book is dedicated." Can you imagine opening a book like that today. Maybe I'm going to open my cookbook like that. I won't but wouldn't that be so funny. Anyway, I think that these waffle parties sound like a lot of fun. They're like the more upper crust fancier version, and more work version of a pancake breakfast which I do enjoy. Now waffles kind of went away in popularity, waned in popularity, in France and England but they did stay popular in both America and in other parts of Europe like Belgium where they evolved into different varieties like the Liège waffle which is like a waffle made of brioche and pearl sugar, and is absolutely amazing. But when it comes to breakfast waffles America really led the way with things like the invention of the electric waffle iron in 1911. The proliferation of waffle houses throughout the land and of course the advent of the toaster waffle. It was in San Jose California in 1953 that Frank Dorsa
developed a way to freeze waffles which could then be reheated in a toaster. These were frozen waffles which they gave the name Froffles, though that name did not stick instead it took on the same
name as another part of their company which made mayonnaise with real fresh eggs, Eggo. Though as much as I enjoy the ease of toaster waffles and I did enjoy those original L'Eggo my Eggo commercials "L'Eggo my Eggo please." I don't think they ever endorsed pouring a wine butter sauce over them like I'm about to do with these 18th century waffles. And here we are waffles and a wine butter sauce from 1714. So before I taste the waffles I actually just want to try a bit of the sauce on their own. I'll kind of try them separately. Buttery. Yeah you just get a little bit of the of the sherry, it's not overpowering at all it's not like you're putting wine. It's actually really good. You know what it reminds me of is like the the brandy sauce that you would put on a Christmas pudding or something like that. It's that
same feeling. And now I'm going to try some of the waffle just by itself.
I should use a fork, I'm using my hands. [chomp] Nutmeggy. The texture is really nice, really light and fluffy from the yeast. The flavor that you get at the beginning especially is
is the nutmeg, and only at the end do you get just a hint of the rose water and I think that that's a good thing 'cus rose water can very quickly become overpowering. Okay now I'm going to break off a piece and pour some of this sauce on it. Here we go. That is so rich, and very, very different from from a regular waffle with maple syrup. It's such a different flavor similar texture but the flavor is something so unique that you would never find at a IHOP or Denny's today. I really like it but I definitely don't think that it's a breakfast food at all and it wasn't, it was more of a dessert, like a sweet treat and that really is what it is. Those flavors are not really breakfasty flavors. I also think like one waffle is is all you need. You don't really need a stack of waffles with this because the flavors are really strong, and that thick buttery sauce is really rich. So make yourself some waffles either 18th century waffles or modern waffles or just heat up some Eggo waffles and I will see you next time on Tasting History.
